EL GRAN COMBO CONCERT"HELD AT LA LIGA LOUNGE:
This has been the most disorganized event I have ever been to, below are some of the things that happened when I attended the concert on Friday March 16, 2018(El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico).
Despite advertising that the doors would open at 8:30pm, they were not open until closer to 10 pm. There was no one at the doors or any type of guidance as to where people should enter, one would think the main entrances but this did not end up being the case. Many of us waited for over an hour in the freezing cold only to be informed that the entrance was from the side of the building. Once at the other doors, some of us who had platinum tickets were told that we should go back as our entrance was at the front; we went back and had to go to the back of the line again.
I don’t understand why they could not have had signs informing people of where to go, even if short-staffed, this could have been done in advance to avoid confusion.
In addition to all the chaos going on, many people started to feel ill due to the severe weather conditions, this was only worsened by the organizers letting people cut in line who had just arrived, only prolonging our wait time.
After much pressure from the people freezing outside, they decided to create a third line for those of us who had bought our tickets on Eventbrite; we got in line, go tour ticket scanned, and finally were inside; however, once inside and past security, the lady on the bottom floor handing out the bracelets told us that we had to go back to the main entrance as there was no one authorized to scan tickets at the entrance, she was the only one who could do so, here began another 15 minutes wait to sort this issue out. Finally the person who had originally scanned our ticket had to come downstairs and sort out the internal issues that were causing delays and preventing us (many of us) from getting our bracelets.
When we gave our tickets to the lady, she gave us our bracelet and assigned us different seats than those purchased, noting, ‘there would be no difference’, we quickly noted this was not the case, they were much worse.
Once we had out bracelet, and just when we though there would be no more waiting, another line awaited us. This line turned out to be bordering on dangerous as people were pushing and getting aggressive due to the delays we all faced during the night. To go to our platinum seats we had to go through two rows of security, where only one person was working/escorting people to their seats.
Eventually people were pushing to much that my son had to step in and block all the impact with his body so that I would not get hurt, this provoked someone else who was pushing forward to confront my son in a very aggressive manner, leaving us in a situation that could have easily escalated; he was just trying to protect me.
Finally, we got through both points of security only to find that our assigned seats had been taken, we talked to one of the organizers who quickly shrugged off our request with, ‘I don’t know’ and told us to just find any seat. We looked for a seat but everything was full, we ended up having to stand throughout the night, when both my son and I had purchased $139 tickets each to have good seats at this event.
Due to the facts above, we would like to request compensation as we were not provided the service we paid for; a full refund, or at the very least being charged as if we had bought standing tickets, which is what we ended up doing regardless.
After this experience, I know that I will at all costs avoid any potential events at this venue. I hope that the issues faced on this night can help to improve the efficiency of any event held at this event and prevent more serious events from taking place.
B Cardenas